I have been staring at a computer or TV monitor for over 25 years and between the CRT and aging, my eyes have been getting worst every year. I am interested in getting the best video quality monitor for under $1000 per monitor. After reading your article, I would assume that a CRT would be the best choice. However, I am in the market to purchase TWO monitors. This is so I can view two programs simultaneously or when a client comes over, rotate the second monitor for their viewing. I mostly stare at numbers, words and Internet images. Also, I prefer larger monitors (i.e. 19"+). Should I consider two CRTs, CRT as my primary and LCD as the secondary, or match monitors and save real estate with two LCDs? What models would you recommend?

Also, it seems that marketing is mostly centered on inches instead resolution. A bit too often this is also true for reviews which tend to place things like elegance of design, or number of USB ports or some such, above petty details like displayable desktop area.

Is this just some braindead carryover from CRTs, or does the average consumer really not care about the number of pixels he gets?Reply

#58That is anybody's guess. No way to find out unless you buy one and open it up. Then use the panel# to get the specs at the panel manufacturer. (And wave your warranty goodbye like I did mine :( )Reply

#55: on the contrary, lg.philips actually informed us of the opposite. While technically the dithering does not impact the response time, electrical modulation does. This is a direct result of how many bits the signal is capable of.

Are there any formal reviews on new substrates that offer 10-bit gamma correction? In particular, I am considering either the Sharp T1820 or the EIZO L695 (L685EX), and considering that their specs are fairly similar, I assume they are using the same substrate. Supposedly the 10-bit gamma correction is capable of displaying a 1024-step greyscale, which can help prevent banding in subtle gradiants.

Unfortunately, neither of these LCDs are widely available for me to perform my own eye-testing. Ideally if someone can offer advice on whether this is an overpriced two-step-conversion technology (as with using an analog cable on an LCD), or if this truly offers discernable benifits, that would be great!

ALL TN+film panels use dithering (or Frame Rate Control as they call it) to interpolate 24 bits colors with a 18 bits signal. These panels are either quoted as 262K colors (64³) or 16.2 millions colors (253³). This applies to ALL 15" monitors and almost ALL 17" monitors (including the Samsung model quoted as 16.7 millions in the article). However all 18" and higher monitors use panel driven with a 24 bits value.

Great article - typical AnandTech coverage/information! I have a question though - I would like to get a 17" LCD with DVI and S-Video inputs (for playing console games). The Samsung MP series has VGA and S-Video, but no DVI. Albatron has a one with some nice specs - the L17AT.

Also, I'd really like to own an LCD because of the weight and size issues (I want larger than my current 16" viewable CRT, 17 or 19 maybe), but also because of the expected power savings. Would you consider adding a comparison of the power consumption in future roundups?Reply

I am disgusted to discover that many manufacturers using the 262000 color panels are lying and claiming 16.7 million. I challenge Anandtech to clearly identify these manufacturers in future product reviews, because if they can't tell the truth about this simple spec, how can we trust them on things like warranties?Reply

The Apple 23" monitor is OK, but its more bark than bite (Apple does these amazing things with advertising). I would be very hesitant to judge a monitor by its contrast ratio.

In fact, one monitor we reviewed a few months ago, the Samsung 192T claimed a 500:1 contrast ratio when we recieved. Now, the specifications claim 750:1 even though nothing has changed on the monitor.

In any case, do remember that the Cinematic Displays are expensive as well. Samsung has done some very neat things in the 21 and 23" area, and in my opinion they are better than apples. To further sweeten the deal you wont need a seperate adaptor to convert the signal.

If you use graphics heavily (as in professionally) CRT is still your only option.

As for your question about DVI, there are actually about 3 versions of the technology. However, almost all hardware on the PC uses the DVI-I format. This format is backwards compatible with the other two, so you'll be just fine.

Hi my old 17" CRT is dying, and I'll need to replace it very soon. I have found that when working in PhotoShop, my old 17" monitor is just to small, and my eyes get quit sore. I think I would like to get and LCD of around 19". I am a PC user and am running Windows 98se.

In my research "the Monitor to which all others is compaired" is the Apple 23" Cinem HD Display Having a resolution of 1920 by 1200, 170 viewing angle, brightness of only 200 cd/m2, lowsey 350:1 contrast ratio, and a half decient pixel pitch of 0.258.

Here in Australia coumptor stores aren't at all helpful in showing you their monitors in real world sisutions. So I've only been able to read the technical specs found on the internet. It seems a number of monitors have hit the 700 to 1 mark, and Planar offer a 19" with a pixel pitch of 0.242mm at 1600 x 1200 while most offer a auful 0.290mm at 1280 x 1024.

Going on specifications alone, I think I would like a 19" LCD with 1600 x 1200 resolution, 300 CD/m2 brightness, 700 to 1 contrast ratio, 25ms or less response time, 170 degree horizonal and vertical viewing angle, 0.242 mm pixel pitch, and of course a DVI coennection. I am not a gamer.

Is this reasonable and practical, or is a CRT a better option, and if so which one would best suit the graphics environment?

I recently read something about there being two kinds of DVI, DVI and DVI-D, is this a concern?

However, as someone here stated earlier, the reference to how some companies manage to get more than the 262000 colours with the 16ms AUO substrate is missing. It seems that they do this by alternating two colours, which would in effect mean the actual total rise and fall time for that one colour is more than 16 ms. But perhaps this is to be discussed in the follow-up to the article? I'm really interested in reading about the grey-grey times for the panels, so I'll be looking forward to part II.Reply

For home, multiple resolutions, more dos boxes - linux sessions (ok I don't have any but if I did) - games which I don't have a strong enough video card for native resolution etc etc.

also the stupid ghosting / shading effect of the high refresh (16ms is too high)

Until it beats a CRT in every single way - I'm not going over - EVEN IF CRT's end up costing more.Plus CRT's are getting better, my 22" Philips (100hz 1600x1200) is only like 45cm deep - quite short really considering.

I think you missed a big issue with LCD image problems that I have commonly observed. Most LCDs are very dim, and almost all of them I've seen are nowhere close to comparable to a CRT, the only ones I've seen that were comparable was the NEC.Another problem I have commonly observed is that the majority of LCDs have very visable "gate lines(as you called it in the artlce), so then you can see that every pixel is seperated, and it makes everything look pixelated, and it feels like you're trying to look through that mesh...Reply

What I missed, and I'm sure it will be coverd in an update, was something more about resolutions. Here's why.

Today, people seem to be using 'weird' or 'odd' resolutions a lot, basically because it seems better to have bigger numbers. For instance, 1280x960 is not acceptable (The drivers for my old Connect3d radeon 9000 did NOT support this resolution) however 1280x1024 is just fine. This strikes me as odd because monitors still use a 4:3 ratio. A lot of resolutions conform to this 'standard' 640x480 800x600 etc etc. But in the higher range they seem to 'cheat' a lot more. From what I can understand, this would cause a distorted display. This is very true for CRT's but LCD's seem to be heading that way asweel, wich is something I Don't get. I say this because it is always recommended to use an LCD at it's own resolution, wich is the amount of pixels on the substrate. I can hardly imagine that they would produce non 4:3 screens, allthough ofcourse it is possible.

Some more info on this would be greatly appreciated since I could be wrong about this and tell people wrong things : )

P.S. and yes, I know that if your monitor is capable of going up really high in resolution the distortion on lower resolutions should be minimal, nevertheless, it is deffinatly there.Reply

I have a Samsung 172T and I have to say the image quality is outstanding. I don't play a lot of FPS games, but for varied use including games and video,using DVI, there are no significant motion blur problems. This monitor is head and shoulders above comparable units I've seen, at least for general use. The price of this unit has dropped significantly since I bought mine almost a year ago. (It may be discontinued).

I'm still not sure if you have it quite right, each subpixel can be independently controlled, you can get 16 shades of blue 16 shades of green and 16 shades of red, giving you 12bit color or 4096 total colors, the red blue and green do not depend on each other, red can be full on, blue can be "1/2" on and green can be off. The main problem was the lack of color, slow response times, and the fact that the information would "bleed" into the column, having one off pixel in a whole column of on pixels would decrease the over all brightness of that columnReply

Just got the deal on passive displays from the LCD expert(my dad, he worked at RCA on LCDs just a couple years after they first invented it) and here is what he said Passive displays do operate in either twisted or untwisted mode; data is supplied as on or off signal. However because the response time of STN is slow, they get gray scale by pulse width modulation techniques. Usually they get 16 shades of gray (4096 colors) with time modulation, and additonal gray levels by spatial modulation (using 2-4 pixels to achieve1-2 bits additonal gray scale). Right now, the best STN color displays achieve 65K colors.

So basically if they need a gray scale they just turn it on and then turn it off before it gets all the way on. So technically the way it was written was correct. (by the way the last two posts were also mine)Reply

"Take a piece of lint free cloth and wrap it around your index finger. Push about 1/4 of an inch above the broken pixel with about as much force as would take to depress a doorbell. Pull your finger down past the pixel to about 1/4 of an inch below the broken pixel. Repeat in a left to right manner as well. If you’ve tried it about 10 times and are still without success, then you most likely are not going to be able to bring that pixel back to life (and you will probably have a light scuff mark on your anti-glare coating as well)."

>>>are you supposed to press the pixels while it's on? couldn't it cause the neighboring pixels to become stuck in the on position?Reply

I have a Cornea Mp704B 17" LCD. It has the 20ms Hyundai Panel. It's very nice, colors look great, sharp text and images, and no trailing or ghosting at all. I did notice that the backlight isn't perfect (just slightly, and i mean slightly, brighter in middle and bottom of LCD than on the top) and I did have 1 dead pixel and 2 dead subpixels (they weren't stuck on red though). I haven't tried rubbing, it sounds a little fisky, but I may eventually. But yeah, the Hitachi panels are nice overall.Reply

#25 is right, passive displays are capable of color, every color cell phone today available in the US uses a passive STN display, as far as i know. It is still a much cheaper technology. As does gameboys and palm pilots. Thats why the color seems like pastels and not vivid colors.Reply

i think 16 and 17 make a point, #16 almost all monitors use the 18bit color he is right about that. A 6 bit driver is much cheaper then an 8 bit driver. And maybe only a few very high end models use an 8 bit driver. #17 discusses the TV LCDs these in fact are the best LCDs you can buy, they have the widest viewing angles, best color, and the fastest response times, because all people do is watch video on them, Although they tend to be lower dpi so if you are thinking about getting one for a computer monitor be sure to sit far a way or you will be able to see the pixels. Some 60" LCDs shown at SID conferences are the best ever made. They look absolutely amazing. A third note is that high res high color displays are a requirement for longhorn. Sharp announced they would be the first to offer longhorn compatible displays. They need high res(UXGA probably) and high color(10bit i believe). These products are still about 2 years off but if you look at displays in laptops they have no problem making high DPI displays, for some reason companies don't think people want a UXGA 17" panels.(they should look at forums like this). There is also a company working on ways to get higher res out of the same number of drivers and subpixels by arranging the pixels differently, (www.clarivoyante.com) this could lead to lower cost for the same resolution potentially allowing the better substrates to be used. There are substrates that use high response time, wide viewing angle technology, its just considerably more expensive. Reply

Very Good article! Anandtech is really getting back in good shape. I for one would like to read one about CRTs as well. While you’re at it why not cover monitors in your price guides as well what’s the use of all this computer power and fancy graphics cards without a good output of it all?Reply

The parts about passive and TFT technology is confusing and perhaps misleading. If you're talking about passive matrix STN or DSTN LCD displays, they were indeed able to turn a pixel partially on, or partially off. However, they're biggest downside was they were always fuzzy because manipulating one pixel, often caused the ones surrounding it to discolour, too. The biggest benefit from TFTs, I believe, was that each individual subpixel was uniquely addressable.Reply

#21 - We have had some troubles obtaining Hyundai and LG.Philips based monitors. Fujitsu and Samsung (and AUO I guess) kind of dominate the Us market. I will see if I cant get some more for our internation readers.

#22 - That would be the contrast ratio. However, as we have mentioned before, this measurement seems to vary so much from manufacturer to manufacturer, that it becomes almost useless.

A point that usually isn't addressed when talking about LCD displays (perhaps it's just me) is the intensity of the colors. I don't care how many variations of pastel an LCD is capable of, the colors just look washed out to me. Is there a measurement that quantifies this?Reply

Yeah, I was reading the article and immediately wondered why Hyundai is not cited as panel manufacturer.I am the VERY HAPPY owner of an Hercules Prophetview 920DVI Black Edition, second generation (same panel as the Hyundai Q17, 20ms response time). I bought it because of an excellent THG review, based on other input as well, based on its great look, based on its price at that time and based on the panel replacement policy by Hercules that seems (not a single dead pixel, yet...) better than others.

Also, as can be seen in several reviews online and as I personally experienced at a LAN where a buddy brought his Hitachi CML174, the response time in games feels a little better on my 20ms than on his 16ms...

Just a single annoyance, maybe due to my R8500LE DVI output, is that, in Quake3, when there is a lot of 'shiny' light/reflection (as in the second solo level, the fire wall/column when getting inside, and having to choose left or right), there is a lot of tearing/banding, especially visible on these shiny/reflective surfaces...Does not appear on the theoretically slower 172T on a R9700Pro.....Reply

Glad to see the article Kristopher, but how could you have a whole article about LCD's without discussing the all important BACKLIGHT.

When you look at a modern active matrix LCD you're basically staring straight into a fluorescent bulb--the backlight. The appearance of the substrate can be significantly affected by the quality of the backlight, and when you're using the LCD to perform everyday work like word processing or working in a spreadsheet then 90 percent of the screen is pure white and all you're really seeing IS the backlight.

In that situation the experience using the LCD is highly dependent on characteristics of the backlight--such as the flicker rate of the fluorescent backlight or any anomalies in the backlight's spectrum of colors.

It's true that these factors are usually glossed over by mainstream PC magazines I was expecting Anandtech to cover these issues.

I have been looking at getting an LCD for a little while now and found this artical to be very interesting. One thing I would like to comment on is you talk about large screen LCD monitors and how there is a lack of a choice. This is true but one thing I have been looking at is getting a Samsung LCD HDTV Monitor. These have a 16ms response time and reach the larger sizes and have PC hook ups in DVI and a regular 15 pin connector. Of course all of this is assuming that price is no option, as these screens are expensive. Samsung already has a 32inch screen that looks great, model LTN325W, and is gonna be putting out a 26 inch mondel, LTN265W in near future. I wonder how these screens would stack against the LCD monitors you discussed.Reply

One important conclusion is missing in the article:On page 10 in the list of brands with the same panel you can see that the # of colors change from manufacturer to manufacturer. Fact is that this specific panel only uses 18bit color info, resulting in 262200 colors. All companies that state more colors LIE.The controllers they use for these panels use some form of interpolation to fake more colors, but this will never result in as good a picture as with 24 bit panels.Also, the interpolation is based on FRC (frame rate control); hereby the pixels get different color info each refresh. This results in visible noise (look at any Acer/BenQ from closeby, chances are you'll see it straight away) and it will also completly ruin the response times as more than 1 refresh is neccesary to give the pixel its color.I have had a lengthy discussion with BenQ about this. The only result is that they promised to state the #colors of models with interpolation to 16M instead of 16.7M, at least this gives the end user a means to detect a 262k panel with interpolation.

Anyway, I've been screwed by BenQ with a 15" FP567 and whenever I see a LCD review I try to warn ppl. Acer and Benq (and lots of other brands) use these 262k panels in almost all their cheap models, so watch out and demand that you can return it if the specs are completly false.Reply

Its a shame that this article did not point out the Hyundai panels. I have an L70S with a 16ms response time, and the picture quality is very good, and I can't perceive any "ghosting." The big downside to this monitor is the lack of DVI. Has anyone else had good experiences with the Hyundai panels?Reply

@#13: "A good article.I my self use CML174.Made a lot of difference to my eyes compared to CRT."

Were you by any chance running your CRT at the default refresh-rate of 60hz? Thats the usual reason people claim they cause eye-strain (often because they don't know how to change it). For the price of a new LCD display, you could get a larger high-quality CRT monitor capable of running at 85hz or higher (ideally 100hz) and you'd be amazed how much better it is than any LCD. On the other hand you could just increase the refresh-rate on the old one and save some cash.

Myself I use the 22" CRT Mitsubishi DiamondPro 2070SB with a 20" visible display at 1600x1200 @ 100hz and the picture is fantastic. Theres no LCD available which could come close to it especially for gaming. Unless you need to take it to a LAN party :)Reply